Cytodiagnosis of soft tissue tumors

✍ Scribed by Dr. Jan Oland; Ada Rosen; Renata Reif; Joel Sayfan; Ruben Orda

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1988
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 225 KB
• Volume: 37
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0022-4790
• DOI: 10.1002/jso.2930370307

✦ Synopsis

The only acceptable definitive diagnosis of a soft tissue mass is histologic or cytologic examination. In recent years, fine-needle aspiration cytology is used in more and more centers for diagnosis of soft tissue masses. We studied 196 aspiration cytologies performed on soft tissue lesions. Out of these, in 48 cases a definitive surgical procedure or open biopsy for histology and further evaluation were performed. There were 25 sarcomas and 23 benign tumors. There was one false negative cytologic result in this group; no false positive cytologies were detected. It seems that cytodiagnosis of soft tissue masses performed by an experienced pathologist is the method of choice, permitting a good diagnostic evaluation, with almost none of the traumatic and oncologic disadvantages of the other methods of biopsy.

KEY WORDS: needle aspiration cytology, sarcoma, soft tissue tumor

Olandetal.

considered [2]. In our series, out of 25 sarcomas, definitive surgical extrpation was performed in 19 cases, based on cytological diagnosis only. It should be stressed that no radical mutilating amputation had to be carried out in these cases. The fact that no false-positive diagnoses were detected further enhances the reliability of this approach.